“Mollie!” Was loudly broadcasted on the shuddery overhead. My stomach turned into knots, even tighter than before, this was it, today I find out how all those frantic questions will be answered. I arose from the chair, making my way towards the oval office. I felt all the desperate eyes in the room turn to see who was selected to be seen before them. It was almost as if I could hear their racing minds, trying to decipher my reason for being here. I walked swiftly trying to escape this uncomfortable feeling of critiquing eyes focused on me. I reached the front desk, where the receptionist sat, typing away at her desk. She wore a green scrub shirt with a pink pocket on the left side to match her pink pants with a name tag that read “Erika”. She led me behind the counter through a door, where I was weighed and measured. She then escorted me down the dirt-smudged hallway, as we passed rooms I could detect all the silent cries of pain and sorrowful pleads of all the souls who had been stolen by illness. How many have died here? When will I? All these questions bounced around in my mind causing a mist of anxiety to be sprayed across my conscious. The endless hallway finally came to a halt and we turned into a cold bleak room, there was a bed to the right and equipment to the left, the nurse told me to remove my clothes while she handed me a gown to wear. Soon after, she left the room, so I could undress. Once I stripped, leg by leg I put on that scratchy hospital gown and flopped myself onto the bed. I waited for several minutes, my eyes fixated on the ultrasound equipment and my thoughts hopped around on bunny trails. I jumped up in a panic as the door flung open and in walked a skinny tall woman with blue scrubs. She had me lay down and applied an uncomfortable cold gel to my chest, it felt as though toothpaste were being smeared on me. The nurse said nothing pertaining to the sonogram results, which disarrayed my nerves even more than before. I was then brought to a secluded room, and they covered me in wires of all disparate colors which plugged into an EKG machine. Something told me that this abrupt test meant my heart must be amiss. Silence filled the room and was broken by the faint tick of the machine, printing my heart’s electrical activity. Page after Page printed, these sporadic red spikes were a foreign language to me, but the nurse’s facial expressions were anything but optimistic.

Soon after I was brought to another somber room, a type of room the movies show when they are diagnosed with a fatal disease. Dr. Overholt, my cardiologist, walked in with a gloomy countenance, I wondered how they were able to break such grim news to so many. How could they remain happy throughout their everyday lives?
He opened his mouth and said in a soft tone, “the sonogram shows you have an enlarged aorta, and the EKG recorded a few dissections on your aortic root. Which leads us to believe, you have Marfan's. There’s nothing we can do, but there is a drug that is still in clinical trials we can try out, that might slow the process, but it’s not promised.”

His words echoed in my mind, as I desperately tried to grasp the meaning to all these extensive medical terms. The drive home as you can imagine was more silent than a remorseful funeral. Once I got home, I laid in bed distraughtly googling everything I could about Marfan's Syndrome and the doctor’s haunting words. While I researched for my answers I could hear my mom whispering to my siblings, attempting to be discrete, but nothing was as distinguishable as her agonizing sobs. I hated hearing her cry, something broke in my heart that night. Listening to the very person I viewed to be the strongest, dissolve and collapse because of me. I felt some sort of responsibility and guilt for being the mere reason she crumbled. Trying to block out that pitiful noise I more intently searched the web again.

Everywhere I looked alarming phrases eluded my attention;
“Genetic tissue disorder”
“Aorta expands and explodes.”
“Life expectancy 30-40yrs”
“No cure”

After my brain was overloaded with all this harmful information. I turned my computer off and I stared at the ceiling deep in thought. So this was it. My questions were finally answered. All the late night ER trips because my heart wouldn’t stop skipping its already scarce beats, now made sense.

I told myself over and over

“I’m going to die just the way my daddy did.” 

“I am going to die in my 30’s, and there’s nothing to change that.”

Who would’ve thought that an 11-year-old would have to bear the burden that their life will be stolen from them in 19 years? I was forced to face the harsh realities of life, these dismantling thoughts threw me into a relapsing cycle of anger, anxiety, and depression.

For over a year I filled my life with degrading thoughts and actions. But one day after meditating, my perspective all changed. I came to the realization that death is not something to be feared. Death is a natural part of life, death gives life meaning, death motivates us to pursue what we want in life because our time is precious and you have to take advantage of “The here and now.” I came to understand and look at my life from a new viewpoint; if I am going to die soon then why should I worry about my due date and waste the time that I actually have? Time, after all, is a gift, one we can either disregard or cherish it.